Poll: Support For Civilian Possession Of Handguns At Highest Level Ever

By William Teach October 20, 2015 – 8:35 am

Gallup is running an article entitled Americans’ Desire for Stricter Gun Laws Up Sharply, and liberal gun grabbers (meaning, they want to grab Everyone Else’s guns, not their own), are crowing about this. They really love this poll

Fifty-five percent of Americans say they want laws covering the sale of firearms to be stricter than they are now, a distinct rise of eight percentage points from 2014. Fewer Americans than last year want the laws to be less strict, and the proportion who want the laws to stay the same has also declined slightly. (snip)

The rise in the proportion of Americans who want stricter laws on firearm sales can be attributed partly to an increase among certain demographic groups. Support rose among Democrats and especially independents from 2014, and among those who do not personally own a gun. However, support increased even among those who say they own a handgun, from 30% in 2014 to 36% this year.

Here’s what it looks like.

Interestingly, American’s have had much higher support in the past. More interestingly, just wanting stricter laws on gun sales doesn’t say what should be stricter, or how strict. Personally, I think they should be more strict, in terms of making it much harder to make a straw purchase and knowing if the person has mental health issues that make the person a danger to other people, along with better information when it comes to violent misdemeanor and felony charges. We want to keep guns out of the hands of people who might use them for nefarious purposes.

Of course, what Liberals mean is making it so hard to purchase a gun that people won’t. How’s that working out in Democratic Party run cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and D.C., among others?

Here’s where it gets fun, though, so fun that liberal gun-grabby websites fail to even bother mentioning this part

While there’s a slight uptick in the number who want civilian ownership of handguns banned, there is still a record level for support for handgun ownership. That’s your takeaway from this Gallup poll. Gun grabbers won’t care. And they still won’t push to enact policies that go after those who illegally possess handguns. Just the law-abiding owners.

Read: Poll: Support For Civilian Possession Of Handguns At Highest Level Ever »

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NY Times Blames Republicans For Ocare Coop Failures

By William Teach October 20, 2015 – 8:10 am

If you haven’t noticed, Obamacare co-ops are losing lots of money, and are not just on shaky ground, but are failing left and right and shutting down. Guess who the NY Times blames for this?

A New Attack on Health Care Reform

In recent months, several nonprofit insurance plans that were created to compete with for-profit insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act have run into financial difficulties. Republicans and other critics of health care reform are cynically pointing to their problems as evidence that the whole reform effort is a waste of money that ought to be repealed.

They neglect to mention that the nonprofit plans, known as health insurance cooperatives, were created as a weak, underfunded alternative to a much stronger option that the Republicans blocked from passage.

Here’s where it gets truly amusing. Can you guess what that option was?

Back in 2009, while the reform law was being debated in Congress, most Democrats were pushing for a so-called public option, a government-run plan that consumers could choose as an alternative to private insurance. Such a plan would not have to generate profits and would have stronger bargaining powers to obtain discounts from health care providers, enabling it to charge lower premiums than private plans.

When it became clear that no public plan could survive a Republican filibuster, Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, proposed setting up these cooperatives to compete with the profit-making plans. They, too, were presumed able to charge lower premiums because they would not have to earn profits. The co-op provision was included in the reform law enacted in March 2010.

See? It’s all Republicans fault for refusing to allow the implementation of a completely socialist, namely, government run/owned, healthcare option, one in which the Central Government would create their own insurance, which would compete against private plans. This would be Medicare for people under 65. It’s not single payer, but it would supposedly provide competition for the existing insurance companies. It would, of course, force doctors and medical facilities to accept payment far below market price, and below existing insurance company values, all backed by the money and power of the Central Government. And they’ve done such a wonderful job with other programs, like the Postal Service, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, etc.

[The coops] problems have been attributed to wrong estimates for how many people might enroll and to setting premiums too low to cover the cost of care, as well as severe reductions in the amount of money available to the co-ops from federal loans and for risk adjustment payments, both the result of Republican opposition to supporting the plans.

So, the people who wrote the bill messed up, not one Republican voted for Ocare, but it’s the Republicans fault?

Now [The Republicans] are after smaller game, the co-ops. The Obama administration should see if there are ways to buttress the remaining co-ops financially. Even if some of the co-ops close, their enrollees will be able to find other sound health coverage thanks to the reform law Republicans were unable to repeal.

Exactly how are Republicans going after co-ops? What, exactly, are they doing? The editorial fails to tell us the answers. I suppose it’s due to Republicans going against the public option 5 years ago. The Editorial Board is blaming Republicans for the failure of Democrat policies. Gotta love it.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Having Solved All Problems, Obama Spends Day On ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach October 19, 2015 – 5:52 pm

It’s like everything has been fixed. There’s no strife in the Middle East, Palestinians are stabbing and shooting Jews for the next Intifada. A US military jet was hit in Afghanistan. Obamacare coops aren’t melting down. Russia isn’t in Syria. Iran isn’t breaking the deal already. ISIS isn’t attacking the US power grid. Everything is lollipops and unicorns!

(USA Today) It’s a science kind of Monday for President Obama, who hosts one event on climate change and another on astronomy.

In the morning, Obama meets with a group of CEOs “to discuss efforts to tackle climate change both in the United States as well as on a global scale,” says the White House schedule.

The discussion includes new technologies that can reduce carbon pollution. The meeting is also part of Obama’s ongoing campaign to build support for a global climate change agreement.

Hmm, so, all these CEOs are going to take fossil fueled travel to discuss something that doesn’t exist (there’s no such thing as carbon pollution in context).

(VOA)  From Coca-Cola to Nike, more global companies are pledging to take steps to reduce emissions and increase clean energy use in order to fight climate change.

The White House announced Monday that 68 additional companies have signed on to the administration’sAmerican Business Act on Climate Pledge, bringing the total to 81 since July when the pledge was launched.

Nike has pledged to reach 100 percent renewable energy in its owned or operated facilities by 2025. Other companies like Sony say they will reduce the annual energy consumption of their products.

So, when the costs for products from these companies spikes, you’ll know why.

PS: I actually wrote most of this post in the am, forgot to hit publish at 1030, and see that Twitchy has some interesting Tweets on the subject, such as

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If We Don’t Do Something About ‘Climate Change’ Now It’ll Be Like Dante’s Inferno Or Something

By William Teach October 19, 2015 – 1:57 pm

The NY Times’ Andrew Revkin, a Warmists who has told us that Warmists should avoid over-the-top yammering, seems to really like this

Avoiding A Climate Inferno

The current issue of Science features a short, but forceful editorial by the journal’s editor in chief, the geophysicist Marcia K. McNutt, calling for humanity, after decades of delay, to get serious about cutting greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming.

“The time for debate has ended,” she writes. “Action is urgently needed.”

Wait, I thought Warmists were denying that kind of thing, the whole “settled science” and ending debate? No? Of course, that shows us that this is about politics, not science, because the debate over science never ends.

McNutt (who was just nominated* to be the next president of the National Academy of Sciences) points to studies showing that nations’ emissions-cutting pledges made ahead of Paris climate treaty talks this December are insufficient to keep the planet from heating up beyond the 2-degree Celsius threshold the world’s nations previously agreed to avoid. (Learn more about that seemingly simple, but very complicated, temperature target here and here.)

Why propose something that won’t actually achieve the goals? As the old saying goes, when the question is why, the answer is money.

McNutt frames her argument around morality as much as data, alluding to Dante’s 14th-century allegorical journey through hell in setting the tone of her piece:

In Dante’s Inferno, he describes the nine circles of Hell, each dedicated to different sorts of sinners, with the outermost being occupied by those who didn’t know any better, and the innermost reserved for the most treacherous offenders. I wonder where in the nine circles Dante would place all of us who are borrowing against this Earth in the name of economic growth, accumulating an environmental debt by burning fossil fuels, the consequences of which will be left for our children and grandchildren to bear? Let’s act now, to save the next generations from the consequences of the beyond-two-degree inferno.*

Well, there’s an easy answer: all those who believe in anthropogenic climate change should immediately give up all use of fossil fuels. If you think this is just more of my “strawman meme”, au contraire. Let’s look at the paragraph right before the Dante’s Inferno one

I applaud the forthright climate statement of Pope Francis, currently our most visible champion for mitigating climate change, and lament the vacuum in political leadership in the United States. This is not the time to wait for political champions to emerge. Just as California has decided to go it alone, every sector (transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, etc.) and every person need to do whatever is possible to reduce carbon pollution by conserving energy, adopting alternative energy technologies, investing in research, and capturing CO2at the source.

She is specifically stating that everyone MUST do this. Who better to show the way than those who believe this is all mostly/solely Mankind’s fault?

*Andrew Revkin left the last line of that paragraph out, not sure why. I would think it would go better with his headline. And, yes, I understand that Revkin’s DotEarth article is from July 7, 2015. It showed up in his Twitter feed a couple days ago, though, and perfectly encapsulates the nuttiness of the Cult of Climastrology.

Read: If We Don’t Do Something About ‘Climate Change’ Now It’ll Be Like Dante’s Inferno Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 19, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…a sea rising up and meeting mountains, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Flopping Aces, with a post wondering if Hillary’s Tea Party connection will come back to haunt her.

Read: If All You See… »

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Crazy Salon Writer Who Wanted Gun Owners Shot Wrote That He Possessed Guns

By William Teach October 19, 2015 – 8:05 am

A few days ago, unhinged Leftist gun control advocate D. Watkins published, at the always unhinged Salon, an article with this headline and subhead

Want a gun? Take a bullet: Take this, gutless NRA cowards — you can have a gun, once you understand the pain of being shot
Gun control doesn’t go far enough. If you want license to carry a weapon, you should know the pain of getting hit

Via Bob Owens, we get this article from David Cole at Black Man With A Gun

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the hypocrisy of an anti-gun rights bigot.

Literally minutes after I finished writing my previous post, I decided to read up a little more on Mr. D. Watkins. Sorting through his previous writings at Salon.com, I came upon a wonderful essay from last July entitled, “Gunplay Is All I Know.” (Though in the photo, it appears he knows little of gun safety.)

I encourage you to read the article in full, so that you can get a true appreciation for the supernova of hypocrisy that is D. Watkins. I’ll just give you a couple of bullet points…er, highlights.

First of all, if Watkins’ tale is to believed, he is a criminal. In the article, he admits to owning two firearms, despite stating that he lives in Baltimore, Maryland, under some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation:

“I’m not a gangster and could not care less about weapon shows or trips to a shooting range, but I have two guns.”

Nowhere in the article does he mention obtaining the state-mandated permit to purchase his handguns. That’s a crime. He also does not mention registering the guns with the state…that’s another crime. I saw nothing about his obtaining a license to own a handgun, as Maryland requires. Crime. And he also doesn’t mention getting a permit to carry, although to be fair, he does not specifically say that he carries his guns outside his home. But it is apparent that Watkins’ gun ownership is illegal and he knows it, as the article’s subtitle reads, “I’d rather be caught with a gun than without one.”

There’s more to it, make sure to hit the link for the rest.

As Bob Owens notes, Watkins deserves to shoot himself twice for those guns, per his own article. Further, he should be in jail, per the law. One Mr. Cole notes “As it turns out, he understands very well why an individual citizen might want to exercise the right to keep and bear arms, and does so himself (albeit illegally).” In essense, to protect oneself from violent criminals. Democrats are all for gun control, but said gun control would only effect law abiding citizens, rather than the criminals.

Read: Crazy Salon Writer Who Wanted Gun Owners Shot Wrote That He Possessed Guns »

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Surprise: Cybersecurity Deteriorated Under Hillary Clinton

By William Teach October 19, 2015 – 7:44 am

In an Associated Press exclusive, Ken Dilanian notes just how bad cybersecurity was during Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State. The article is primarily published in local news sites, though the NY TImes does have it as a web only piece, not in their published paper. Other national news outlets, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, MSNBC, for instance? Not at this time

(AP) The State Department was among the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks while Hillary Clinton was secretary from 2009 to 2013, a situation that continued to deteriorate as John Kerry took office and Russian hackers breached the department’s email system, according to independent audits and interviews.

The State Department’s compliance with federal cybersecurity standards was below average when Clinton took over but grew worse in each year of her tenure, according to an annual report card compiled by the White House based on audits by agency watchdogs. Network security continued to slip after Kerry replaced Clinton in February 2013, and remains substandard, according to the State Department inspector general.

In each year from 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a “significant deficiency” that put the department’s information at risk. The latest assessment is due to be published in a few weeks.

The State Dept is unhappy with the assessment, and yammers on about being almost 100% secure, so, a bit of CYA, rather than putting the effort in to actually resolving the issues. They had been warned numerous times by Inspector Generals of the deficiencies of the system.

Clinton approved significant increases in the State Department’ information technology budgets while she was secretary, but senior State Department officials say she did not spend much time on the department’s cyber vulnerabilities. Her emails show she was aware of State’s technological shortcomings, but was focused more on diplomacy.

She failed at the diplomacy part, too. But, hey, perhaps this is the reason she put together a homebrew server in violation of State Department and federal government regulations

Emails released by the State Department from her private server show Clinton and her top aides viewed the department’s information technology systems as substandard and worked to avoid them.

“State’s technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively,” top Clinton aide Ann-Marie Slaughter wrote in an email to Clinton on June 3, 2011.

You can almost understand why Hillary did what she did. Of course, it’s a big jump from using typical private email systems, such as Yahoo or Google, or government email, which are both rather insecure and vulnerable (and many keep all your information), to running a homebrew server that had virtually no security, and was much, much worse than private and government programs.

Supposedly, State’s system used for disseminating classified/sensitive information was very good. Yet, Hillary still chose to use her terrible homebrew server. Using your own server, interestingly, is a recommendation from many cybersecurity experts for secure email, but, that’s for you an me, who won’t be targeted by hackers from intelligence agencies around the world, and would have actual security measures implemented. Hillary could have used multiple email systems, such as ProtonMail or others. Even Yahoo would have been more secure.

Rather than work to fix the problems, Hillary abdicated her role and used an even worse system. This is who Democrats want for president.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Pope Francis Is Totally Like Will And Grace When It Comes To Climate Change Or Something

By William Teach October 18, 2015 – 5:09 pm

I wish I could say this came from a satire site, like The Onion. Alas, no, though, really, most Cult Of Climastrology websites seem to be satire, since they seem to be so over the top bat guano insane. Like Joe Romm’s George Soros funded Climate Progress

Why Pope Francis Is The ‘Will And Grace’ Of Climate Change

In recent weeks, a number of writers have lamented Pope Francis’ failure to transform public opinion on climate change. Did the pope’s encyclical on the environment alter the views of American Catholics? Not really. Did his address to Congress sway Republican politicians? No. But that’s okay.

We may come to see Pope Francis as the Will & Grace of climate change. That is not to say that he is Will, a compulsive neat freak with perfect hair, or Grace, Will’s self-absorbed counterpart, or even Jack, their persistently flamboyant friend. Rather, the pope is Will & Grace, the show — all of it. He is at once trendy and tendentious, and when he’s not making us laugh and smile, Il Papa is challenging Americans to think hard about the defining issue of our time.

If the pontiff’s message on climate change feels inconsequential now, it’s not a flash in the pan. Pope Francis has made the care for our common home a central part of the church’s mission, offering a new avenue for faith leaders to drive home the moral argument for climate action. In other words, he is making it normal to care about climate change. And while there isn’t a good yardstick yet for measuring the Francis effect, we may look back in ten or 15 years’ time and see the pope’s “coming out” as a turning point.

Since Warmists are so enthused by Pope Francis on Hotcoldwetdry, will they follow his lead on abortion and gay marriage?

Read: Pope Francis Is Totally Like Will And Grace When It Comes To Climate Change Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 18, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is coffee that will be wiped out by too much carbon pollution, you might just be  a Warmist

The blog of the day is Da Tech Guy, who scored an interview with Ted Cruz.

Read: If All You See… »

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach October 18, 2015 – 9:22 am

Patriotic Pinup Ren Wicks

Happy Sunday! A gorgeous day in America. The Sun is shining, birds are singing…hey, the Mockingbirds are doing a car alarm! Cool. This pinup is by Ren Wicks, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. neo-neocon discusses Bush Derangement Syndrome (yes, it still exists)
  2. The Last Refuge wonders why Hillary was transferring secret historical docs to her server
  3. Noisy Room notes that Obama’s plans a takedown of another ally
  4. Independent Sentinel covers the Obama admin giving the OK for Iranian missiles
  5. Weasel Zippers notes how many kids dined at school after Michelle Obama’s lunch program was scrapped
  6. Vox Popoli covers how SJWs define “good community”
  7. This ain’t Helll… discusses a special snowflake gun owner
  8. Theodore’s World notes Obama giving money to a Jew hating group
  9. The People’s Cube covers the difference between climate and weather
  10. The Other McCain notes that it’s not illegal to be crazy in California
  11. The Lonely Conservative features crazy DWS being crazy
  12. The Daley Gator notes what happens when there’s a work requirement for food stamps
  13. Scared Monkeys covers Clock Boy visiting a war criminal
  14. Public Secrets has a shocking study on CO2 improving tree growth
  15. And last, but not least, Powerline hands out the Perpetual Greenie Award

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. (BTW, since someone asked, the reason I leave links for the previous week up (or you might see a *) is because they are place holders for later in the day or for next weeks. Easier than rewriting all the time. Also, the listing order has to do with how they are added over time, not how good a post is. I just copy and paste from the previous week, then edit. If you see one of the *’s, go ahead and check out the blog anyhow, see if there is an update. I cannot update with my Android during the day.

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